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No, Folks, This Is NOT Normal …

Yesterday morning we awoke to news of another mass shooting, this one at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, that left 13 dead, including the gunman. The first headline I saw claimed it was the “First mass shooting in the U.S. in over 10 days”, as if that were a statistic in which we ought to take pride. First, a mass shooting every eleven days would be nothing to be proud of even if true, but the reality is that it was not the first, but rather the eleventh mass shooting since the shooting at L’Simcha (Tree of Life) synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on October 27th. Eleventh. Think about this one for a moment. Did you realize there had been, on average, one mass shooting per day for the past ten? Why did we not know? How could we have missed it?According to statistics from the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 307 mass shootings in the 312 days of 2018. It has become a common occurrence in our lives and we are, apparently, no longer shocked. Five people shot, nobody died … oh well, just another day in paradise, eh?

The words of one parent whose son, Telemachus Orfanos, lost his life yesterday morning tell it all …

“I don’t want prayers. I don’t want thoughts. I want gun control.”

Telemachus had survived the Las Vegas massacre last year, only to lose his life in this one.

Gabrielle Giffords, the former Democratic congresswoman from Arizona who was shot in 2011, tweeted …

“307. There have been 307 mass shootings so far this year. Do we really want to raise our children in a country where mass shootings like Thousand Oaks are a weekly occurrence? A country where every single day in America, more than 90 people are killed with guns? Classrooms. Places of worship. Newsrooms. Movie theaters. Restaurants. Yoga studios. Nightclubs. Playgrounds. No place in America feels safe anymore. No other high-income nation has this level of gun violence. I’m heartbroken, angry, and never going to accept this as normal.”

None of us should ever be willing to accept this as normal … it isn’t. I’ve quoted statistics in past posts, so I won’t bore you with them again, except to say that every other nation in the industrialized world has stricter gun laws than the U.S., and not a single one has the number of gun deaths … not even close … that the U.S. sees every single year. Every. Single. Year.

Tree of Life synagogue, Parkland, Las Vegas, Pulse nightclub, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook … how many more? How many more people in this country have to die before somebody wakes up and says ENOUGH!!! Small men who rely on guns to make them feel like big men need to find some other outlet for their anger! We The People are tired of the killing. The NRA owns most every republican in Congress, as well as the small man sitting in the Oval Office.

Please … don’t sit back and shrug this one off, don’t accept that gun violence in the United States has to be ‘the norm’. It doesn’t have to be. Write letters, make your voice heard, or one of these days it might be you who gets that call in the middle of the night.

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25 thoughts on “No, Folks, This Is NOT Normal …”

All I know is that I can count at least 5 mass shootings in OCT./ NOV. 2018. There has to be a real effort for legislators to try over and over again to pass sensible gun control measures. Starting in January 2019, the US house of Representatives need to take on this issue.

Earlier in the year Mr Trump picked up on the number of murders in London being greater than those in New York –see said the Oracle if you take away guns they will still kill one another with knives or some other means. Now we are faced with escalating knife crime among adolescents , some say the police are losing control.
Give’em more guns that will cure it —- really ! it doesn’t seem to have that effect How about building more churches ? or maybe more schools will do the trick ; incidentally many of the young men knifed death in the UK were school boys.
Might I suggest in both countries we need to reduce the guns to a minimum no ordinary person need to carry any weapons and the police must be allowed to search any they are suspicious about. Only the guilty need fear exposure.

I quite agree … more guns, knives, thoughts & prayers aren’t doing the trick. Laws that are supported and enforced by the police and not mocked by our lawmakers are needed. I am called a far-left, socialist liberal for my views, but frankly I see no need for guns in the hands of any except law enforcement and the military. Just see no need. And that said, while knives can certainly kill, they are a lot harder to kill with and can only kill one person at a time, unlike automatic weapons that can mow down hundreds in just a few minutes. Frankly, I would rather go up against a person armed with a knife any day than one armed with a gun. Much better odds.

We have a debate in the UK now since the police want extended stop and search powers , there has been an out cry by the group Liberty but the irony is they want knife crime reduced but everyone must have perfect liberty. I heard the interview and when the BBC asked how the knife crime would be reduced they were unable to give a satisfactory answer. I would be happy to have my liberty reduced to increase everyone’s safety. After all no one expects to be free to take what ever they wish on board an aircraft .

Ahhh … over here we refer to that as wanting to “have their cake and eat it, too”. But in truth, while I understand the need for enhanced law enforcement, the ‘extended stop and search’ powers is worrisome, for it tends to be used more heavily on minorities than others. At least, that has been the case here. I’m like you … I have no problem giving up a bit of liberty if it keeps the world safer, but how do we ensure that it doesn’t turn into a racist ploy by the police? It may not be as worrisome in the UK … but here, it is almost guaranteed to become a tool for racism.

In a country with a population of the United States of America, to have more publicly-owned guns than people to own them makes no sense. You spend how much money on defence every year, and yet nothing on keeping guns in the hands of service people only. There are no sane minds in government, not if there aren’t enough governing people to turn off the taps and close down gun factories, and gun sellers. But there is too much money to be made selling guns… I think you need to start suing governments for wrongful death for every person killed through gun violence. Make the NRA one of the co-defendents. And the makers of the guns too. If you cannot stop these nuts from selling guns, use up their profits in court costs. I’m sure the lawyers would approve of such a plan!

I cannot argue with a single thing you say. This country, though, is gun-crazy … literally. I know of a man down in Georgia who literally owns an arsenal … an entire room filled with every sort of firearm imaginable. Y’know why? He says it’s to fight off the military when they come to … what, I don’t know. I wonder how his AR-15 will stand up to a tank? And I remember writing a story a year or so ago about a couple who had left their guns unsecured, one of their kids got them and shot his sibling. Social Services told them that if they didn’t get rid of the guns, they would lose their children. Guess what? The guns must have meant more to them than the kids, for they kept their guns and the kids were placed in foster care. The arms manufacturers and the NRA are a big part of the problem for sure, as it is them that are buying off members of Congress and governours to stifle any sensible gun legislation. But the mentality of this nation is also partly to blame. It’s mostly males, which is why I think it’s guys that feel like that gun stuck in their belt makes up for their lack elsewhere, but I even know at least two women who are gun-totin’ … won’t leave the house without a pistola in their pocketbook. I am in the minority, for I don’t own a gun, never have owned a gun, and do not allow guns in my home. I even tried to get a deputy sheriff to leave his gun outside once, but I didn’t have much luck with that one 😉 But I DID throw my brother-in-law out one time because he had a gun in his pocket.

That would have been fun to watch.
Meanwhile, Jill, I have always appreciated that you go the extra mile by adding a “u” to American words that end in “or.” Honor becomes honour, and vigor becomes vigour. But today you have gone too far, lol. Governor stays governor. Dictator would stay dictator. I don’t know that there is a hard and fast rule to follow, but most “or” words that desctide a person’s position do not change, except as in “Your Honour.” Meanwhile most words that describe a state of being do change, like valour. Other words, such as colour, change too, but not sure why. Anyway, thanks for trying to be English.

Hah! Not an attempt to be British at all. I went to Catholic schools in largely Latino neighborhoods, and that is how I was taught! I used to work hard to ‘americanize’ my writing by dropping the ‘u’ in words such as labour, neighbour, etc., but it takes extra effort, so I don’t bother anymore. 🙂

And you, Mr average white American, may be out for a drink with your buddies could be the reason for that call in the middle of the night. There doesn’t seem to be a venue that can be called safe. I’ve heard the arguments from the pro NRA brigade that the answer is for everyone to be armed.My answer to that is that you’ll just feel macho until hit by the bullets of the automatic weapon wielded by the lone gunman because you weren’t ready. And maybe you or someone else get a couple of shots off. In the confusion you’re just as likely to hit another innocent.
Even a small nod towards gun control might help by stopping weapons from falling into the hands of those who shouldn’t have them. Those too young to be fully responsible, those who have a mental illness or those with a record for domestic violence. Ask yourselves why the NRA say you must not legislate this kind of control and the only sensible answer is gun sales, which is what drives those who pay for the NRA. DON’T BE THE NEXT STATISTIC.
Cwtch

Very well said, my friend. This nation has lost its collective mind where guns and the 2nd amendment are concerned, and it seems that nothing, no matter how many die in a day, a week or a year, nothing changes. Same ol’ rhetoric from the NRA, the politicians in their pocket, and the gun-toting ‘good ol’ boys’. Sigh.
Cwtch

It has already affected mine, Jill. In 2014 my son and his roommates were awakened in the wee hours of the morning when a visitng friend unwittingly opened the front door to three drug dealing meth heads who were looking for drugs. The only affordable housing for single young people is often in undesirable areas. The former tenants were apparently heavily into drug traffiking and these thugs were looking for them. They had my son on his knees, gun to his head while they rummaged through the entire house. When they let him up he ran throughout the house digging out all their electronics, tvs, phones and anything else to appease them. When the police came and realized there were young people there, they called it a ‘drug deal gone bad’, laughed and would do nothing to find the perpetrators. They had hit my son in the head with a pistol and he was not even asked if he needed medical care. My son, on his own, tracked them down through their use of his stolen credit card at a convenience store they stopped at for gas and there were cameras. When they were identified they were already in jail on other charges. He was emotionally scarred for life by this incident and the callous indifference of the legal system. Within a few years we would learn that those criminals were killed in gang drug related rivalry incidents. My son moved back home and lived with us for quite awhile after that. Can you even imagine the words I uttered every time I got a call from the local police asking me for donations? No mother wants to hear her son say he just spent a night with a loaded gun against his head. After the relief comes the horror of possibility. He was 25 at the time.

What a horrible, horrible thing!!! I am so sorry for both you and your son, but very thankful he wasn’t killed! Those police officers should have been relieved of duty. So much wrong with this whole thing … if we cannot count on the police, then who can we trust? Heartfelt hugs, my friend!